The money goes to 20 to 30 recipients who have demonstrated "exceptional creativity in their work and the prospect for still more in the future,” according to the foundation’s Web site. Each fellow gets half a million dollars, in quarterly installments, for five years after the award is given.

Adding to the award’s allure is a top-secret selection process. A clandestine network of 100 nominators, whose membership rotates, scours the country. An even smaller secret panel selects 30 finalists, and the foundation board makes the final cut, according to a 2005 account in the Baltimore Sun.

There is very little publicly written about this back-dealing process, which may be because writers have been too busy trying to angle for an award themselves. In the late 1990s, the New York Timesdetailed some of the criticism of the awards, quoting academics who dismissed them as a publicity stunt, “American myth” and even a “misuse of philanthropic funds.” For a period in the award’s history, Times reporter Janny Scott, noted that “detractors, many of them on the left, said it was lavishing scarce philanthropic dollars on mostly white, mostly male, mostly well-established professors who hardly needed the help.”

But for the rest of us still trying to find a leg up on how to get nominated, The Root created a database of 31 African Americans who received the award from 1999 to 2008 in search of patterns. So here’s an unscientific formula for becoming a MacArthur Fellow:

oWork in the arts: 16 of the fellows belong to that category.

oGraduate from college: 25 of the fellows had a B.A. or higher.

oLive on the East Coast: 12 of the fellows reside there.

oHook up with an institution or an organization: 17 of the fellows had some kind of institutional affiliation.